Flighted parrots have freedoms that clipped birds can only dream of. They can go where they want, when they want. They don't have to wait for their owners to take them from place to place.

This additional freedom comes at a cost, however. It's nearly impossible to get a flighted bird to do something it doesn't want to do. This places a greater burden on the owner to not only respect the bird's wishes, but to find ways to make the bird want to cooperate with activities like returning to the cage, staying on a perch, or chewing only on designated chewables.

We all know that it's important to maintain a healthy relationship with our birds, whether they are clipped or not, but this becomes even more important with flighted birds. If a flighted bird doesn't want to be with you, it won't just walk to the other side of the table or T-stand. It may fly to the other side of your house.

Fortunately, the same techniques that allow us to build and maintain healthy relationships with clipped parrots also work well with flighted parrots. In a nutshell (pun intended), your job as a parrot owner is to be a constant source of rewarding experiences. Just as with clipped parrots, rewards can be as simple as a head scratch, a favorite seed, or a response to a friendly vocalization. The only difference is, you must not become complacent. Flighted birds will generally cooperate with you consistently if you reward every cooperative behavior.

Training thus becomes a higher priority for owners of flighted companions. You should consider every interaction with your bird as an opportunity for the bird to learn something from you. Whether you look at it this way or not, rest assured that your bird most certainly does. If you go out of your way to consistently teach your bird that you are fun to be around and that your cues are opportunities to earn rewards, you can expect your bird to enjoy being around you and respond appropriately.

Of all the behaviors one can teach a flighted parrot, recall is perhaps the most important. Virtually every dog owner has trained their companion to come when called; yet few parrot owners bother to train this elementary behavior. Why? Probably because few parrot owners need to. The bird is rarely going to be very far from the place you left it. Flighted birds, on the other hand, are not confined by T-stands or boings.

Recall is important for many reasons. First and foremost, it represents your most likely means of recovering an escaped bird. For this reason alone, I highly recommend training any bird to come when called. If they ever do get out, they will at least know what is expected of them when you ask them to come back. That might sound silly, but it's absolutely true - if you haven't trained your bird to come when called, your bird will not know what it means. Second, it is often very helpful to be able to call your parrot to you as you go about your daily business in your home. Third, training recall gives you an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with your bird, which helps in all aspects of bird keeping.

If you currently own a clipped companion bird, don't wait until it can fly to start training recall. Train the bird to walk to you when called. If you wait until the birds' feathers are grown out, you may find yourself expecting the bird to both learn to fly AND learn to come when called. Breaking that down into separate behaviors will make it easier for the bird to succeed, which means that you'll have more opportunities to provide rewards, which means that your bird will enjoy your company even more.

You read that correctly - I said your bird would need to learn to fly. It might seem odd to imagine that a parrot doesn't know how to fly, but if it's been clipped all its life, there's a very good chance that it has very little idea how to use its wings. A bird with its first set of flight feathers might struggle to get from place to place, much like a human with a first pair of skis will struggle to get down a snow-covered hill.

With time, practice, encouragement, and lots of rewards, adult birds can learn to fly. You might be surprised how little they fly, though, especially if they have full wings for the first time after being clipped for years.

When introducing your bird to the world of free flight, remember to start small - don't just toss your bird into the air and expect it to fly. First, give it a destination to look forward to and teach it to look forward to going there. Reward it for simply stepping up from a particular perch onto your hand, or for stepping from your hand onto a particular perch. Once you see that the bird understands that it can earn rewards that way, very slowly increase the distance between the perch and your hand. Go from the bird simply stepping a short distance to reaching way out with one foot; then reaching way out with its beak and climbing onto your perch or hand.

If you have difficulty training your bird to get to this level, do not expect your bird to fly when starting out- first work on the pedestrian behavior and practice that until the bird understands and is motivated to do it repeatedly. Extend the distance no more than an inch at a time. If at some point the bird doesn't come to you, reduce the distance by one inch and reward the bird several times for coming to you across that distance; then increase the distance again little by little.

If you are working on flights to a perch, do not toss the bird unless you are certain that the bird WANTS to go to the perch that you have in mind. It is not enough that you want the bird to fly to the perch! If your bird is not looking directly at the perch and leaning in that direction, practice stepping to the perch first.

No discussion of flighted bird keeping would be complete without a note about making your home safe for your flighted companion. When people bring home a bird, they inevitably must spend some time bird-proofing the home. Allowing a bird to be flighted in the home means extra precautions. Valuable and chewable objects must be kept away from flying beaks. Windows and mirrors should be covered.

Take a good look at what's on any shelves in your house and imagine what a bird could do up there. Change the shelves accordingly. If you are going cook, your birds must be locked in their cages or in another room to ensure that their feet do not find their way onto a very hot perch. And, ladies, this is your chance to settle the toilet-seat dispute once and for all - the lid needs to stay down for the bird's safety.

For many years now, people have been changing their birds to suit their homes. It is my hope that the future will see more people changing their homes to suit their birds; giving their birds the opportunity to be birds, do what birds do, and above all to fly.

For more information about training flighted birds, please see the following articles at my web site:

• Teaching recall
  
• Training fly-to-perch